You remember that the Elector of Saxony, after the Diet of Worms, sent him to the Castle of Wartburg, to prevent him from being murdered or kidnapped. He remained there many months; and during that time the old ecclesiastical institutions of Germany were burning like a North American forest. The monasteries were broken up; the estates were appropriated by the nobles; the monks were sent wandering into the world. The bishops looked helplessly on while their ancient spiritual dominion was torn to pieces and trodden under foot. The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and several more of the princes, declared for the Reformation. The Protestants had a majority in the Diet, and controlled the force of the empire. Charles the Fifth, busy with his French wars, and in want of money, dared not press questions to a crisis which he had not power to cope with; and he was obliged for a time to recognise what he could not prevent. You would have thought Luther would have been well pleased to see the seed which he had sown bear fruit so rapidly; yet it was exactly while all this was going on that he experienced those temptations of the devil of which he has left so wonderful an account.
We shall have our own opinions on the nature of these apparitions. But Luther, it is quite certain, believed that Satan himself attacked him in person. Satan, he tells us, came often to him, and said, 'See what you have done. Behold this ancient Church—this mother of saints—polluted and defiled by brutal violence. And it is you—you, a poor ignorant monk, that have set the people on to their unholy work. Are you so much wiser than the saints who approved the things which you have denounced? Popes, bishops, clergy, kings, emperors—are none of these—are not all these together—wiser than Martin Luther the monk?'
The devil, he says, caused him great agony by these suggestions. He fell into deep fits of doubt and humiliation and despondency. And wherever these thoughts came from, we can only say that they were very natural thoughts—natural and right. He called them temptations; yet these were temptations which would not have occurred to any but a high-minded man.
He had, however, done only what duty had forced him to do. His business was to trust to God, who had begun the work and knew what He meant to make of it. His doubts and misgivings, therefore, he ascribed to Satan, and his enormous imaginative vigour gave body to the voice which was speaking in him.
He tells many humorous stories—not always producible—of the means with which he encountered his offensive visitor.
'The devil,' he says, 'is very proud, and what he least likes is to be laughed at.' One night he was disturbed by something rattling in his room; the modern unbeliever will suppose it was a mouse. He got up, lit a candle, searched the apartment through, and could find nothing—the Evil One was indisputably there.
'Oh!' he said, 'it is you, is it?' He returned to bed, and went to sleep.
Think as you please about the cause of the noise, but remember that Luther had not the least doubt that he was alone in the room with the actual devil, who, if he could not overcome his soul, could at least twist his neck in a moment—and then think what courage there must have been in a man who could deliberately sleep in such a presence!
During his retirement he translated the Bible. The confusion at last became so desperate that he could no longer be spared; and, believing that he was certain to be destroyed, he left Wartburg and returned to Wittenberg. Death was always before him as supremely imminent. He used to say that it would be a great disgrace to the Pope if he died in his bed. He was wanted once at Leipsic. His friends said if he went there Duke George would kill him.
'Duke George!' he said; 'I would go to Leipsic if it rained Duke Georges for nine days!'